IT might perhaps be expected that I should avail myself of this opportunity to supply some information respecting the progress and prospects of Christian Missions in India, or to discuss some questions that have arisen respecting their organization and management ; and this would probably have been my own opinion of what was desirable, had it not been for the importance which certain more general questions-affecting the relation of Christianity itself to the religions of the world, and especially its relation to the Oriental systems of religion-have lately assumed. The view of this subject which seems to be prevailing more and more amongst the literary and scientific classes, and to which utterance appeared to me to be given a few weeks ago, at the International Congress of Orientalists, by one of the most distinguished scholars and men of letters of our time 1 that view would lead, I believe, either to the abandonment of missions altogether, or to their being left exclusively in the hands of persons who have "a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

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